Here are 90 books that A Guest in the House fans have personally recommended if you like
A Guest in the House.
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I’m a human being who struggles with feeling human. When I was 17, I got my brain pretty shaken up after a traumatic event, causing a swathe of memory loss and mental health problems. How do you regain a sense of yourself when chunks of your childhood memories, your skills, and your sense of self have disappeared? Here are some books that grapple with that question, and others.
I believe this book is one of the classic staples of surreal fiction. Its disjointed, spiraling narrative and sprawling non-linear plot lines challenge the definition of what a ‘book’ is. It uses everything from footnotes to text alignment to color schemes to make the act of reading itself increasingly difficult, which matches the house’s influence on the narrators’ memories and interests.
Reading it for me was like learning Latin or watching Casablanca–it gave context to decades of experimental media inspired by it, from TV shows to DOOM game mods. Love it or hate it, it’s a solid tool for any inhuman’s toolkit.
“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations,…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Growing up in the seventies in the UK was a fertile time for lovers of the uncanny, with memorable children’s dramas like Children of the Stones, The Changes and Ace of Wands. Like many others, I keenly collected junkshop editions of Herbert Van Thal’s horror anthologies. Occultism was in the air in the troubled, economically stagnating Age of Aquarius, and though too young to see them, we schoolboys all knew of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Omen. A friend gave me a Lovecraft biography for my 18th birthday, and though I’d read none of his work, I went on to become fascinated by him and his Weird Tales compadres.
What one reads as a child often makes a powerful impact. While not exactly a haunted house novel, I first encountered this tale of a bedridden young girl who finds that she dreams of what she draws (with a magic pencil) through the legendarily creepy 1972 adaptation, Escape into Night, (of which only black and white videotapes remain) and afterward read it and thought it very atmospheric.
Every attempt by Marianne to ‘correct’ her defective artwork somehow makes the situation more nightmarish, and the house she initially draws is particularly disturbing in the way naïve drawings can be, as are the sinister, crude stone entities that gather around it, imprisoning the boy who she has drawn–and trapped–inside; and the landscape, literal and psychological, is eerily memorable.
'I could get in,' Marianne thought, 'if there was a person inside the house. There has got to be a person. I can't get in unless there is somebody there. 'Why isn't there someone in the house?' she cried to the empty world around her. Marianne is no child prodigy at drawing. Confined to her bed with an illness she finds a pencil in her great-grandmother's workbox, but the house she draws is as unsatisfying as always - like a shaky doll's house with grass as unlike anything growing as ever. But that night she dreams and rediscovers her drawing…
Growing up in the seventies in the UK was a fertile time for lovers of the uncanny, with memorable children’s dramas like Children of the Stones, The Changes and Ace of Wands. Like many others, I keenly collected junkshop editions of Herbert Van Thal’s horror anthologies. Occultism was in the air in the troubled, economically stagnating Age of Aquarius, and though too young to see them, we schoolboys all knew of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Omen. A friend gave me a Lovecraft biography for my 18th birthday, and though I’d read none of his work, I went on to become fascinated by him and his Weird Tales compadres.
I found a second-hand copy of this then-basically forgotten book back in the ‘80s, a brittle mass-market paperback that had for its cover a totally inappropriate picture of a withered corncob on parched red earth (the actual setting is a remote part of Ireland).
However, the cover also blazoned an endorsement from H P Lovecraft (himself only intermittently in print in those days), so I gave it a punt. Though most of Hodgson’s stories are set at sea, this, his best novel, centers on a ‘found’ manuscript that tells of a recluse encountering monstrous, pig-like entities in an old house that is on the border between dimensions.
Is he mad, or are they real? Genuinely uncanny, this late Victorian tale is also a precursor of modern, visceral, non-ghostly supernatural fiction.
Many are the hours in which I have pondered upon the story that is set forth in the following pages. I trust that my instincts are not awry when they prompt me to leave the account, in simplicity, as it was handed to me.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Growing up in the seventies in the UK was a fertile time for lovers of the uncanny, with memorable children’s dramas like Children of the Stones, The Changes and Ace of Wands. Like many others, I keenly collected junkshop editions of Herbert Van Thal’s horror anthologies. Occultism was in the air in the troubled, economically stagnating Age of Aquarius, and though too young to see them, we schoolboys all knew of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Omen. A friend gave me a Lovecraft biography for my 18th birthday, and though I’d read none of his work, I went on to become fascinated by him and his Weird Tales compadres.
When Truman Capote reread this book to make a screenplay of it, he grumbled there was ‘barely a writeable scene’ because so much of the book concerns the unnamed governess’s increasingly frantic interpretations of phenomena that may only be hallucinations.
When I first read it, I found its protagonist excessively flighty; since then, it’s grown on me as perhaps the subtlest of ghost stories, its implicitly sexually predatory specters (who hope, it seems, to escape hell by perverting the two young innocents in the governess’s care), prefiguring the garish horrors of films like Hellraiser, in which demon cenobite Pinhead, summoned by the opening of a magical box, threatens depraved protagonist Frank: ‘Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell’–which fate seems apt for the malign Peter Quint and Miss Jessell.
"She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her." For the first time since 1898, readers can experience Henry James's eerie The Turn of the Screw the way his original readers did, as a twelve-part weekly serial. The Coffeetown Press edition showcases the novel as it first appeared, complete with provocative illustrations by John La Farge and Eric Pape, in Collier's Weekly. This unique edition, with an analytical introduction by Peter G. Beidler, will of course be valuable to scholars. It will be particularly useful,…
I’ve been fascinated by how people behave and how in-group bias can change who they are. That interest led me into computational sociology (I study human behavior for a living), with my work appearing in The New York Times, USA Today, WIRED, and more. But my deepest fascination has always been with people’s propensity for the horrific. I LOVE the liminal space where fear, secrecy, and belonging collide. Being neurodivergent, living in a small Virginia town with my wife and our neurodivergent, queer son, I see how communities can both shelter and suffocate. That tension is why I’m drawn to stories saturated in dread, beauty, and what lives in the shadows.
This is the book that taught me how powerful loneliness can be.
Every time I return to it, I feel one character’s ache settle into me, that desperate want to belong somewhere, even if it’s a house that doesn’t love you back. I recommend it because it still feels as if I’m attempting to figure out what is happening alongside the characters, the way only great writing can.
Jackson makes you realize that the scariest hauntings aren’t in the walls, they’re the ones we carry within us.
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story "Sardonicus," considered by Stephen King to be "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written," to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and stories…
I’m a Canadian author and artist that loves to write and draw the darker side of fantasy. Ever since I was a child, I have adored mythology, horror, and the creatures and worlds that are present within the fantasy genre. The world of fantasy has unlimited imagination, and its lore and structure grow constantly, which gives endless ideas to us writers to create endless brilliant realms and the creatures that dwell within them.
The Essential Tales of H.P. Lovecraft is a collection of some of Lovecraft’s famous horror stories. "The Call of Cthulhu" is one that I truly enjoyed the most. If you are a fan of horror and otherworldly beings, then I believe that you would love this book as much as I do. The creatures and the ambiance that are present in his stories are fascinating, and just give a wonderful look into the many worlds of horror and the unknown that he created. His works are some of the things that inspired me to become a dark fantasy writer and a gothic-style artist.
Discover the true meaning of fear with these classic horror stories.
The Essential Tales of H.P. Lovecraft collects one of the author's most popular novellas, At the Mountain of Madness, and six of his most famous short stories, including The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Out of Time, The Dunwich Horror, The Colour of Space, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Whisperer in the Darkness. These hair-raising tales have inspired generations of authors and filmmakers, including Stephen King, Alan Moore, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman. This elegantly designed clothbound edition features an elastic closure and a new introduction.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I'm a horror writer based in Colorado, and I spent my childhood in a variety of wild, untamed places. Horror that uses location as its antagonist is one of my favorite things because I understand how quickly–and easily–a beautiful place can become sinister. It’s not enough to go to a scary place; these books are about what happens when the scary place starts to grow roots inside you, how it changes you. I have written two books that deal with this to some extent, the first about an abandoned coal mine, and the second about Antarctica, and if you like any of these, I hope you’ll consider trying one of mine!
The Hollow Places follows Kara, who has returned to her childhood home in North Carolina, as she takes over running her uncle’s museum of eccentricities after he’s injured. If you love nature-based horror as much as I do, this is a must-read–when a portal opens up in the museum, Kara goes through it into a willow-filled, marshy world of rivers and doors and terrifying, hungry creatures. She has to find a way to protect her home from this new world, which seems desperate to spill into hers and consume it, leaving it hollow.
Recently divorced and staring down the barrel of moving back in with her parents, Carrot really needs a break. And a place to live. So when her Uncle Earl, owner of the eclectic Wonder Museum, asks her to stay with him in exchange for cataloguing the exhibits, of course she says yes.
The Wonder Museum is packed with taxidermy, shrunken heads, and an assortment of Mystery Junk. For Carrot, it's not creepy at all: she grew up with it. What's creepy is the hole that's been knocked in one of the museum walls, and the corridor behind it. There's just…
What could possibly captivate the mind more than monsters? As a kid, I eagerly consumed books from authors like R.L. Stine, Stephen King, and HP Lovecraft. I watched George Romero, Wes Craven, and John Carpenter, and played games like Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, andThe Call of Cthulhu.When I discovered monster studies in my PhD years—a way to read monsters as cultural productions that tell us something about the people that create them—I was hooked. Ever since, I get to continue reading my favorite books, watching my favorite movies, and playing my favorite games. It’s just that now someone’s paying me to do it.
Part theory, part media analysis, and all awesome, Nelson’s work traces the rise of the “Protestant Gothic” tradition in the United States and the way in which this dark and gloomy literary tradition came to inform most of the media we consume today. From zombies to vampires, HP Lovecraft to Guillermo del Toro, Nelson reveals the ways that the Protestant Gothic has shaped modern literature, television, and film into a space of religious imagining that we don’t even recognize.
The Gothic, Romanticism's gritty older sibling, has flourished in myriad permutations since the eighteenth century. In Gothicka, Victoria Nelson identifies the revolutionary turn it has taken in the twenty-first. Today's Gothic has fashioned its monsters into heroes and its devils into angels. It is actively reviving supernaturalism in popular culture, not as an evil dimension divorced from ordinary human existence but as part of our daily lives.
To explain this millennial shift away from the traditionally dark Protestant post-Enlightenment Gothic, Nelson studies the complex arena of contemporary Gothic subgenres that take the form of novels, films, and graphic novels. She…
My dad instilled in me a love of, and respect for, history and an avid interest in golden-era Hollywood. In my adult life as a professional writer, that paternal guidance has translated into eight books about various aspects of old Hollywood, with a growing focus on the intersection of Hollywood and World War II. My career to date was punctuated by the international success of Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II, which detailed the future star’s very hard life in the Netherlands under Nazi occupation. Dad didn’t live long enough to know I’d written anything, let alone a number of books he would have enjoyed reading.
Leonard Maltin shot to prominence as a youth publishing the annual Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, with each new edition becoming an instant New York Times bestseller. Maltin also served a long stint as an on-air correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, where he earned backstage access to generations of movie stars.
His recently published memoir details his early obsession with the movies and then his slow but steady rise as one of Hollywood’s leading historians. I love this book most for its insights into the old stars that Maltin met—stars who knew him from his books and TV work and opened up about their own histories, making this book a valuable resource for film scholars.
Hollywood historian and film reviewer Leonard Maltin invites readers to pull up a chair and listen as he tells stories, many of them hilarious, of 50+ years interacting with legendary movie stars, writers, directors, producers, and cartoonists. Maltin grew up in the first decade of television, immersing himself in TV programs and accessing 1930s and ‘40s movies hitting the small screen. His fan letters to admired performers led to unexpected correspondences, then to interviews and publication of his own fan magazine. Maltin’s career as a free-lance writer and New York Times-bestselling author as well as his 30-year run on Entertainment…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
By François Vigneault and Jonas Madden-ConnorAuthor
Why are we passionate about this?
We’re a couple of award-winning graphic novel creators who happen to have been friends since middle school. We’ve been enmeshed in films and comic books for our entire lives, and always enjoyed discussing them with each other, sharing hidden gems, and staying up late to pore over what went right (or wrong) when a favorite comic was made into a movie or TV show. We’re in the middle of an ongoing wave of cinematic adaptations, with billion-dollar blockbusters and indie gems alike looking to graphic novels for inspiration. Read these five books now before they show up on a screen near you, and you’ll have the sweet pleasure of pronouncing “The graphic novel was better!”
Black Hole is a striking tale of a sexually transmitted plague running rampant amongst a community of teenagers in suburban Washington in the 1970s, all illustrated in creator Charles Burns’ almost inhumanly precise and dark art style. Mind-bending and terrifying, this graphic novel has come close to being adapted many times over the year, and its mix of eminently relatable interpersonal drama and existential dread make it a perfect fit for the screen, a horror story with heart and soul.
“The best graphic novel of the year” (Time) tells the story of a strange plague devastating the lives of teenagers in mid-1970s suburban Seattle, revealing the horrifying nature of high school alienation—the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety, and the ennui.
We learn from the outset that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways—from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable)—but once you’ve got it, that’s it. There’s no turning back.
As we inhabit the heads of several key characters—some kids who have it,…
